To the Victor

by R Coots

  Too long. Not long enough.

  Maybe, if she was lucky, he would kill her soon for her disobedience.

  But then what would happen to Delfi? She looked at her sousi from the corner of her eye and wanted to cry all over again. Being the remaining half of a bonded pair was even worse than losing a spouse, if all the stories were true. What would that do to Del, the sane one, the sister who had held them both to sanity all these years?

  The man and woman were talking to each other again, ignoring her as they argued. It was a quiet sort of arguing, without the waving about of hands and shouting that she would have expected. The woman wanted something. The man disagreed.

  Jossalyn rubbed tears from her eyes and tried to pay attention, but she could only gather that the man held some sort of precedence over the woman. The idea seemed borne out by the crossed arms and mulish look on the woman’s face as she glared up at the man. The man’s teeth were very white against the dark of his skin, even in this light. To be sure, he wasn’t quite smiling. More baring his teeth. But even a person dead to all Feeling would know that he’d won the point.

  She shrank back against the pillow when he turned towards her, pulling the thin blanket up around her shoulders in a futile attempt to hide herself. He had a personality as forceful and raw as an unshielded blast of solar energy. Suddenly she was very glad for the crown on her head.

  “Well, Jossalyn lis Churus isk Fuerrus. You fucked us up but good, you know that? There’s a pile of people here—" He nodded at the strange woman. “Who’d like to fry your brains and throw you to the wolves. Lucky for you, I am who I am and you’re more valuable to me alive than in a coma. Got a lot of questions you need to answer.”

  She stared at him, the sense of his words barely penetrating her daze. Would it never end? Was it not enough that she’d been awakened, three hundred years older and widowed? She’d thought these people were foreign to the Empire. How did they know who she was if they weren’t? How could they still be hunting her?

  Something dropped into place in her mind. She squinted up at the man, who still hadn’t given his name. From the lowest to the highest rank, of, none of the man-hunters in service to the fuerrus would have kept his name from her. If only to gloat that he’d been the one to bring back the prize asjokojek skatbiteogiek. And the way he held himself. The words he used . . .

  How had someone born in the gutter come to be in charge of what sounded like a substantial fighting force? How had someone like him been the one to find her? More surprising yet, how had he known what the glyphs on her back meant? The Savages of the streets had no history, no lineage to their names. The only maruste they bore was the glyph of nehkeh, a non-person. Such was all they were ever given—and that only if they got caught at some crime, so they would no longer be able sneak into the society of their betters. Better to have a bare back entirely than to wear the mark of a Savage.

  Yet here he was, conversant in the glyphs of the highborn.

  “You are nehkeh,” she whispered in horrified awe.

  The man went rigid, jaw clenched and eyes blazing. For one panicked heartbeat, she thought he would kill her. Instead, he leaned forward and braced one hand on the mattress to either side of her hips. Teeth drawn back in a snarl, the growl that rumbled out of his chest nearly made the table vibrate beneath her. She cringed back against the raised head of the table under her. He was huge. Huge and terrifying and not at all human.

  As if he could read her thoughts, the snarl stretched wider, turning into a feral grin. “I got one more station to take before the army drops into the gravity well of this fucking planet.” He spat the word “fucking” like he expected it to draw blood. Jossa felt her fist clench in the sheets. She forced it to loosen. Ancestors knew how he’d interpret possible aggression. She wasn’t strong enough yet to fight.

  If he noticed the involuntary movement, he didn’t show it. Instead, he leaned closer, breath ghosting over her skin as he ran his nose along the line of her jaw. Jossa shuddered, grateful for the crown that kept his filth from invading her soul.

  Hair brushed her cheek. His hair. “I get back, better hope I didn’t find any information on the base. I do, I won’t need to keep you or your—” He shifted and Jossa closed her eyes, imagining he was looking at Delfi now. “Sister alive.” He leaned back far enough so his gaze met hers. “Myself, I’m starting to hope you don’t remember shit. Feel free to call me names too. Makes the killing more fun.”

  Then, with all the care of an engineer in charge of an unstable power core, he turned on his heel and stalked back into the shadowed hole from which he’d emerged. It must have been a doorway, for a moment later a very feminine shriek of alarm pierced the air, followed by a male snarl of rage.

  > Chapter Twelve

  Jossa

  They’re not happy with flattening a planet. Don’t you see? Whoever they can’t load into their ships gets gassed. Gassed! The whole planet. It’s the only thing they make for themselves. That damned Seed.

  -survivor of Uzrus System

  Eventually the woman finished her work, having poked needles in every vein and major muscle group from Jossa’s shoulders to her legs. Then she made sure the bag on the end of the catheter tube was attached properly, the fluids in the IVs were dripping as they should, and Jossa herself was not about to make an escape attempt. Or tear the crown from her skull by main force. Jossa didn’t bother to enlighten the woman as to her familiarity with the device. She had few enough advantages here. The longer they thought she was dazed and ignorant, the better.

  A few female moans and cries filtered through the door when the woman left, and then Jossa was all alone. Just the quiet hum of medical equipment at the head of her table, Delfi’s near inaudible breathing, and her own echoing memories. She waited a few moments just to be sure nobody was coming back, then dropped her head to her knees and sobbed until she fell asleep.

  >><<

  The pattern of life in the little infirmary was as predictable as the hum of the ship through the deck. The woman, who eventually gave her name as Iira, would come. At first, she only checked the readouts and her charges, changed out the bags at either end of the tables, and made sure Jossa hadn’t pulled out any needles or torn any of the sensors free.

  She refused to answer questions, except for once when Jossa asked for clothes. A robe, a shift. Anything would be better than relying on the blanket to keep her warm and cover her bits. Iira merely looked at her, then looked at all the various tubes, sensors, and wires, and shook her head. When Jossa pressed the woman, she was rewarded with a short “Not allowed.”

  The look in Iira’s eyes had promised a different sort of denial if her prisoner kept asking. Considering the fact that she was giving Delfi that look, Jossa decided that it would be safer to drop the issue.

  After Jossa felt the side of her jaw and found a fresh scar where the small lump of her translator should have been, and a new lump just below that, she stopped trying to make conversation. Her old translator wouldn’t have been able to keep up with this new language, but it looked like they’d given her a new one. Since the medic wouldn’t speak, that meant she was being purposefully isolated. She could live with that, for now.

  Her main worry was that Delfi didn't wake. Iira’s refusal to communicate extended to the state of Jossa’s sousi. Translator or no, that was unacceptable. When rational queries failed, Jossa moved on to pleas of mercy. When those fell on deaf ears, begging entered the equation. Having progressed through various stages of hysteria and finding them useless against the wall of Iira’s indifference, Jossa finally started tearing needles from her arms, intent on reaching her bonded one and determining life or death. She threw curses at Iira, who swatted the flung medical paraphernalia away from her face in the race to find out whether the prisoner could launch herself off the table before the jailor could pin her down. Iira won. Barely.

  Jossa retched as Iira caught her around the stomach and all but threw her back onto the mattress. As soon as
the opposing force was gone, she made another break for freedom. “Ancestors damn you,” she snapped, caught again. “Just tell me! Why hasn’t she woken up yet?” She coughed, choked, and coughed again. Made another break for the uncertain freedom that was anywhere but the table. Was pushed back again. Coughed some more and spat a few more curses for good measure.

  A hand struck her in the sternum. Jossa’s metal-enclosed skull missed the pillow, bounced, and nearly gave her a fine case of whiplash. If she hadn’t been trying to figure out if her ribs were intact, she would have been worried about her neck. How could any woman be that strong?

  “She sleeps so she’s not you,” the medic snarled. “Weak outFleet lungs. She doesn’t need serum for her lungs if the needles come out! Lay back! I’ll tell Warlord you died of idiocy.”

  It took a second to sink in, and it still didn’t make sense. “She’s not sick from the cryo?” Jossa asked, hardly believing what she’d heard.

  Iira just snorted, picked up the loose end of the IV line, and came at her. Jossa decided not to give the medic an excuse to poke any unnecessary holes and held still. So long as she was in the same room as Delfi and so long as her sousi wasn’t dead, she could be patient. For now.

  >><<

  Later, after Iira had come and gone a few more times, the warlord returned. He carried a shallow bowl in one hand, and the armor he wore was bloodied. Ancestors only knew if he’d worn a helmet to whatever battle he’d come from. She assumed he must have, because his face was clean of all but a three-day growth of beard and a haze of sweaty grime. So were his hands, which seemed wrong.

  For one panicked moment, she thought he was going to rape her. Or bleed her into the bowl. Or, or—well. She didn’t actually know what she expected. She’d half forgotten about him. Time had no meaning in this room. The dim glow of the lights never changed. As far as she could tell, the displays on the monitors didn’t have time markers attached. And the shrieks of the women outside never came at regular intervals. Come to think of it, she hadn’t heard any loud noises in a while. A great while. Which made the bleeding bowl a not-so-absurd idea, when she gave it another thought.

  “You’re in luck,” he said. “Kemvate of the base melted the hard drives. Everyone on the thing sucked in Seed rather than fight or get captured. Looks like I’ve still got a use for you.” He shoved the bowl at her. “Here.”

  Jossa shrank away and stared at the grayish-brown half-liquid slopping up the sides.

  “I know you can handle it. Iira says the electro-stims in the casket were low priority, but you’ve got the strength to keep crawling out of bed. Whatever she’s hooked you up to should have fixed most of the atrophy. So take the fucking bowl.

  Jossa took the bowl, just managing to set it in her lap before she dropped it. She looked at it, wondering how in the universe she was supposed to eat. With her fingers? The stuff wasn’t exactly solid, but it looked too thick to drink.

  Frowning, she reached for the surface of the mush. Oh, this was going to be unpleasant on so many levels.

  “Hold on.”

  Jossa blinked up at the man. He scowled and felt along his belt for something. After a moment or so, he growled and yanked a short metal tube from its clip. A press of some hidden button and a twist of one end, and thin stream of gray flowed from the tube. The substance wobbled for a second as he fiddled with the controls, then solidified into a spoon.

  It was a good thing the bowl of food was in her lap, or Jossa would have dropped it. Her jaw certainly fell open. The warlord had taken a living metal weapon and reprogrammed it into a spoon. A spoon! Nevermind figuring out how a Navlad spacer’s blade came to be aboard an enemy ship. He’d made it turn into a spoon!

  Denz would want to tear the thing apart. Delfi would steal it the moment she found out it existed. And Rui? Rui would tell her that her food was getting cold and she shouldn’t waste time staring at fancy new tech when she could be eating.

  Once she’d taken a couple spoonfuls of the bland mush, the man leaned against the edge of her mattress and laced his fingers together over his belt, watching her. She fought down a blush and tried to keep eating. It was hard. The food was quite nearly the most tasteless stuff she’d ever eaten, and the texture put her whole digestive tract into revolt. Having a strange man standing over her with greed in his eyes was, sadly, much easier to handle.

  He made her scrape the bowl clean, down to the last grain, and then he scooped it from her lap. She blinked back tears as she watched him set it aside. Three hundred years. Spacers’ habits hadn’t changed in three hundred years. How many times had Rui reminded her, when she and Delfi first came aboard Skatasi? Nothing goes to waste.

  If she died, would they send her through the recycling processors? Or would they dump her out an airlock? There was no way she could count on a death tablet being made from her maruste. Would Del know what had happened to her?

  She had to stay on this man’s good side. For the moment, nothing else mattered.

  The man saw her tears. Something in his face changed. His free hand lifted, then dropped back to his side. A muscle worked in his jaw. Then, so quickly she almost thought she’d imagined what came before, all the tension seeped out of his body. What replaced it was the predatory ease of a big cat.

  Jossa felt her fingers tighten around the handle of the spoon. She wasn’t sure what modifications had been made to the original programming, but if she could tap the power switch fast enough, she might be able to get it to retract and reform as a blade faster than he could take it away.

  “So,” he said, plucking the spoon from her hand and setting it with the bowl on top of the tower that housed the display screens. “Let’s try this again. Gonna guess you didn’t park yourself on an empty planet full of bajbarog because you needed some alone time. You piss off a Great Family? Pop out a baby nehkeh?”

  On the list of things she’d expected to hear, that last one hadn’t been anywhere near the top. Jossa stared at him.

  “What? That it?” His upper lip quivered, revealing the edge of his teeth. His eyes were hard and entirely unforgiving. “You didn’t have any trouble figuring out what I am. Maybe you were fucking one of the garbage men while the fuerrus was having fun with the rest of his whores.”

  She should have fought to keep the spoon. She could have stabbed him with it. “I belonged to isk Churusimpir lis Kuchruog lis isk Fuerrus himself,” she snarled at him. “And that is exactly why you found me on that planet.”

  One eyebrow went up and he tilted his head to one side. “That so? He put you there, did he? Hide you—sorry, the two of you—” The man’s teeth flashed as he nodded at Delfi’s prone form on the other table. ”Away long enough for people to forget about the scandal before he woke you up and the three of you lived happily ever after? Give him time to escape his responsibilities and circle back around to pick you up? Must not have been true love after all, since he forgot you there.”

  No. No, it hadn’t been like that at all. And it had, in so many ways. Someone was supposed to come back for her. For Del. They were supposed to have forever with the ones they loved. If there were any justice in the universe, they would have.

  Something warm and wet landed on her hand. She looked down. A drop of water slid down her fist where she clenched it in the sheets. Another drop landed as she watched.

  Well, this was just perfect. Now the man would know he’d hit a sore spot. Not sore. A point of perfect agony. Any other weaknesses you’d like to show him while you’re at it? she asked herself. Anything else you’d like him to use against you?

  “Look.” The man leaned over and planted his fists on the mattress next to her. This close, she could feel the heat coming off him. See the vein standing out on his forehead. He snapped his fingers in her face and she blinked.

  The man growled low in his throat before continuing. “The fuerrus back then jumped the nav beacons and damn near tore the Empire to bits. Did he or did he not put you there?”

  Jossa opened her
mouth. Closed it. What to tell him? How much to tell him? How dangerous was it for him to know these things? What would he do to her if he knew the whole truth?

  “I already told you,” she said finally. “We were there because of the fuerrus.”

  He leaned in closer, his face inches from hers. She could smell soap, and see the stubble growing across his jaw. But his eyes were what held her attention. He was reading her. Analyzing her face for clues.

  “Explain,” he whispered. The deep rasp of his voice reached into her nerves and set every one of them on edge.

  Jossa clutched at the sheets around her knees and bit her lips to keep her mouth shut.

  For a moment, she thought he would hit her. His posture stiffened. The muscles of his neck and arms tightened. Then, with no warning at all, he straightened, stalked around the end of her table, and headed for Delfi.

  Oh no.

  The warlord stood, one hand hovering over a cluster of tubes near Delfi’s shoulder.

  “I yank,” he said, “and there goes the serum that’s helping her breathe. I don’t know which one of these is the right one, so I might as well pull them all. Don’t know how long she’ll have, either. Course,” he moved his hand so it rested on Del’s cloth-covered chest. “Could just cave in her rib cage.”

  Jossa gulped.

  “Or.” He moved his hand back to the tubes. “I call Iira in here and she unplugs your sister. I have her transferred to one of the Breeder ships.” The smile on his face looked like a death rictus. “I’m gonna bet you’re the unstable element in the arrangement you two have. Bond. Whatever the fuck you people call it.”

  “Sister,” Jossa whispered.

  His grin got bigger. She thought she saw insanity around the edges of his eyes. “Sister then. You fucking sai and your fucking soul-bonded shit. More trouble than it’s worth, comes down to it. How far will I get before you lose your mind? Thousand miles? Two? Fleet’s spread out over a fuck ton of space right now.”